It’s Only Common Sense: Customers Need Confidence More Than Low Prices
Dan’s Biz Bookshelf: Revisiting 'The Popcorn Report'
The International Printed Circuit & APEX South China Fair held in Shenzhen was crowded from opening day into the final morning. Its record number of 531 exhibitors occupying 51,000 square meters and 2,379 booths spilled over into a third hall. Final attendance exceeded 40,000.
Though business has slowed and the future seems uncertain, a high level of energy was felt with both exhibitors and those seeking information on new and improved products, as well as systems for automation. It was interesting to see the proliferation of direct digital imaging systems (mostly LEDs). We counted over a dozen.
As expected, we did not find much that was dramatically new, but there were many improvements. One of the offerings of great interest in this day of increasing flex manufacturing was the horizontal reel-to-reel processing equipment shown by Grown's Electronic Technology Co., Ltd. of Shenzhen. The 10+ year-old company's automated un-wind/wind system appeared suitable for many applications including coating, dry film resist lamination, and plating and etching.
Orbotech’s booth was busy, as usual. The company showcased its recently launched Orbotech Diamond™ 8 DI mass production system for solder mask. This product joined the recently introduced, high accuracy Nuvogo™ 1000 DI system for flex solder mask applications.
Also on display and running live demonstrations was the Sprint™ 200 Legend Inkjet Printer system capable of providing 95 prints per hour of white legend ink. The company also demoed a new laser repair station, the Ultra PerFix™ 120, which removes excess Cu defects to improve yields.
Many attendees were seeking information on new industry directions as increased costs and overcapacity have initiated a migration of fabricators of lower tech boards to lower cost areas. Great interest was expressed in the next generation of wearable electronics, which gave a boost to new equipment and materials as well as processes for flexible circuits and displays. We believe that continued drive to put more on a chip, new stacked chip designs and packages indicated future growth for packaging than for circuit boards for the immediate future—even though global purchases for semiconductor equipment has slowed in recent quarters.
Some fabricators from the West, faced with the need to recapitalize (and digitize) their outmoded equipment of the 1980s and 1990s, bemoaned the fact that they could not readily see what was truly available back home, nor could they find local support for some of the offerings shown in China. The cost of updating and modernizing was also stunning to some. Other board builders from the U.S. Midwest were seeking ways of buying photo imageable solder mask, primary imaging resist, and Cu-clad laminates directly from Chinese specialty chemical and material companies at a lower cost than is currently available from more conventional sources.
The Smart Automation Pavilion focused on the developments of Industry 4.0., and it fit well with the show's global theme. It demonstrated how automation can improve production efficiency and quality, virtually making a factory system competitive anywhere in the world.
Hall 2 (and Hall 3, filled with overflow from Hall 2) offered many Chinese specialty chemical suppliers showing what appeared to be replicas of the standard products of DuPont, MacDermid, Taiyo, Atotech, Dow, etc. Stories were told of some of the mid-size to larger American fabricators buying Chinese-made solder mask, dry film photoresist and other supplies at lower costs than could be obtained in the U.S.
HTC and Huawei are both expected to launch their respective new smartphones in the first quarter of 2016, according to a Chinese-language Economic Daily News (EDN) report. Both will have large displays. The new HTC One X9 will also have a 13 megapixel camera with image stabilization.
Page 3 of 4
